Frank Special Ops team will focus on turning around short-term project work

The agency told PRWeek that it typically receives about 30 per cent more project briefs with rapid turnaround times at this time of the year. There is also a growing trend towards more project-based briefs.

"As an industry, we have seen a shift in how clients are buying PR services and that shift is an increasing number of project briefs versus ongoing monthly retainer briefs," Frank founder and managing partner Andrew Bloch said. "We’ve also seen in the past few years that decisions for projects are getting made later and briefs are coming at shorter notice.

"We believe it is important to set ourselves up to handle this nature of brief accordingly. During this Christmas, New Year and Black Friday period, the challenge of handling a lot of short-term projects at one time at very short notice becomes more intense."

The new Special Ops unit will pool additional resources into the agency’s central creative planning and content division, with a dedicated resource to handle short-notice executions.

"This is a bit like a retailer hiring additional staff to deal with the Christmas influx," Bloch said. "We have boosted our team, and have external suppliers on hand ready to go at short notice."

This includes bringing in a range of trusted preferred suppliers across a range of specialisms "on speed dial", which includes everything from event production and artificial intelligence through to reindeer hire and fake snow suppliers.